Luke Bryan has written and sung them all — love songs, breakup songs, buddy songs, and looking inward songs. But on this, his 43rd birthday (July 17), let us tip our hats and/or lift our glasses to his singular achievement, the spring break song.
In his themes and interviews, Bryan has walked the line between farm boy and frat boy. Clearly, though, farm boys are not spring break creatures. In spring, they plant things–like crops. Spring break, as Bryan relays it to us, is the domain of fraternity types with too much time on their hands, too much beer in their coolers and volcanic libidos.
Bryan released his first spring break-themed EP — Spring Break With All My Friends — in 2009. It contained the cuts “Sorority Girl” and the soon-to-be crowd favorite, “Take My Drunk Ass Home.” And it set the tone for future lyrical bacchanalia.
There followed the Spring Break packages Hangover Edition (2010), It’s a Shore Thing (2011), Suntan City (2012), Like We Ain’t Ever (2014) and Checkin’ Out (2015). These mini-albums were peppered with such provocative and promising songs as “Wild Weekend,” “Spring Break Up,” “Love in a College Town,” “Good Lookin’ Girl,” “Buzzkill” and “Cold Beer Drinker.”
Also in 2015, Bryan’s record label released the two-CD set Spring Break: The Set List that contained all 25 songs in the series. This was apparently Bryan’s farewell to the genre.
Whether he will again visit the beach with his spring break rowdiness remains an open question. Maybe he could return as a chaperone with a whole new perspective — maybe with something like Spring Break: Enforcing the Curfew.